This blog highlights Copyright, Fair Use, Patent, Trademark, Trade Secret and "Open" Movement-related topics—Open Access, Open Data, Open Government, Open Software, Open Science, Open Education—which are explored in the LIS 2184: Intellectual Property and "Open" Movements and LIS 2194: Information Ethics graduate courses I teach at the University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information.

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

" A United Nations panel recently released disastrous policy recommendations designed to increase access to medicines in developing countries. The panel ignored obvious solutions.

Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon originally tasked the UN High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines with remedying the “policy incoherence” between intellectual property rights and drug access. The panel predictably — and wrongly — viewed IP protections as a barrier to access rather than a bridge to medical innovation.

Undermining IP rights will not help patients in developing countries access medicines.

A 2016 Foreign Affairs study sought to determine whether strong patent protections increase the prices of drugs to developing countries. It found that patents were not key drivers of higher expenditures."